Profile: Summerfolk Festival is at Right at Home in Harmony Centre
Lorraine Campbell, board member at Harmony Centre, interviews Jaret Koop from the Summerfolk Festival for her 'Profiles' series on the people and the community group that call the facility home.
REPRINTED
by Lorraine Campbell
I met recently with Jaret Koop, a musician and operations manager at Summerfolk, one of the resident organizations at Harmony Centre. Summerfolk has called Harmony Centre home since June of 2024.
Harmony Centre uses the term ‘resident’ to distinguish long-term monthly renters from those renting on a weekly or one-time basis (a limited number of monthly rental spaces are still available).
Fromager’s Music in Owen Sound was purchased by Long & McQuade in 2015, and Jaret was transferred from the Burlington branch of Long & McQuade in November of that year to manage the store. He was at Long & McQuade until August 2019, and then left when he decided to return to playing music full-time. By the end of 2019, he had booked all of 2020.
A COVID Curve Ball
Jaret joined Summerfolk as a volunteer in 2017, primarily working with the Youth Discoveries programme, and then transitioned to staff in January 2020.
When he was hired as a part-time office administrator for the Georgian Bay Folk Society in February 2020, he had no idea how different the job would suddenly become. Scrambling to reconfigure the festival to fit the strict guidelines imposed by COVID-19, he created an online show for the summer of 2020 and then organized a collection of 18 small venues scattered throughout Owen Sound for 2021.
The festival was back at Kelso Beach at Nawash Park for the first full festival post-pandemic in 2022, and by 2023, Summerfolk had recovered and was one of the most successful years ever.
I asked Jaret how he defined a successful festival. He thought for several minutes, then said my simple question had a complex answer, “There are so many different metrics to determine whether something is a success or not.”
Success, financially, meant making the bills. Success, for the musicians, meant seeing engaged crowds. Success, for the festival-goers, meant experiencing some familiar musicians and also being introduced to some new ones, and at the end of the weekend, feeling the buzz that comes with having experienced something special.
Success, for the organizers and volunteers, meant having made it through the weekend without any major surprises and having been able to manage the unexpected ones.
“That’s all success,” he said.
A Huge Undertaking
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Summerfolk has been a highlight of Owen Sound’s summer season since its inception in 1976. This year, from August 15th – 17th, Summerfolk will present over 40 artists and 40 artisans supported by the efforts of more than 600 volunteers.
There will be many big name draws, but there will also be many less well known and more up-and-coming musicians, as well as the five acts who were chosen from the Youth Discoveries auditions (and, keep your eyes open to see if you can spot Tim Harrison, founding artistic director of the festival in 1976).
This year, Harmony Centre is proud to sponsor Summerfolk’s Sharing Circle Stage. The venue offers a more intimate and interactive experience, featuring artist interviews, spoken word, poetry, and hands-on workshops, such as introductions to traditional instruments or learning how to play the spoons.
Come out and say hello to the Harmony Centre Sharing Circle Stage volunteers!
For tickets to Summerfolk, to check out the list of musicians, to donate, or to volunteer, go to https://summerfolk.org.
Profiles is a series of articles by Harmony Centre board member Lorraine Campbell. Each month, Lorraine writes about the people and the community groups that make this remarkable facility what it is today.